It never, ever fails
You can try with all your might to have a discussion in an ostensibly ecumenical Christian discussion forum, but as a Catholic you can always expect three things to occur with nigh-absolute certainty:
- Mention Mary, and evangelicals will fall all over themselves to shout her down. Exactly how this reflects the fact that all generations will call her “blessed” (Luke 1:4), I have yet to figure out.
Seriously…what’s so darn difficult for some people to accept about the fact that of all the merely human people we meet in the Gospels, Mary is far and away the best example of what it means to actually be a Christian and to respond to God’s call?
- Mention Mary, and evangelicals will fall all over themselves to accuse you of blasphemy or idolatry, even if you never once mention terms like “intercessory” or “mediatrix.”
In what universe is it equivalent to saying that Mary is God when you assert that Mary was preserved from sin by the grace of God? Especially when to say as much is to say that she, like we, entirely required the grace of God for her being saved from sins!
“Ah,” says the evangelical, “but does not Paul say “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God?” He does not say “all but Mary,” does he…so cleary, Mary too must have sinned somehow, and at some point.”
To which, it should be noted that her being preserved from sin does not in fact violate what Paul teaches, because the fact that she required God’s grace to preserve her from sin means that absent the grace of God, she would indeed have fallen into sin and so fallen short of His glory.
What makes Mary different is that she was, I say again, preserved from sin by the grace of God. She did not sin not because she was God, but because God imputed to her the fullness of His grace from the beginning, so that she might be an entirely unspotted mother to the Son. The same process of imputation of grace which we undergo, Mary underwent…just at an earlier time.
Not satisfied with this answer, the evangelical can be expected to switch gears: “If God could protect Mary from sinning,” he will ask, “why not cut out the middle-man altogether and just protect Jesus from sinning (as I believe he did)? Mary being sinless is not Biblical and it is certainly not necessary.”
But the fact is, Mary’s being sinless is in fact necessary. It is Biblical as well, which we will discuss later. But it was also most assuredly necessary. To suggest as much as this objection does is, basically, to suggest that Jesus was not fully human, since it would mean that the Lord was not born of a human mother in the most authentic sense; it would mean that He did not experience a fully human birth, which in turn would mean He was not fully human.
- Mention anything an evangelical disagrees with (just in general) and he’ll throw out a wall of chapter-and-verse citations without bothering to…I don’t know…exegete or even necessarily quote them. Not that it would necessarily be wise to do so — most “proof texts” fail to serve the point in which they are intented by their user, once they are considered in their proper context.
But as it is…the proof texts inevitably get hauled out. In this case, there were some interesting ones to deal with.
